Tuesday, March 28, 2006

My dreamPod

So, I saw this funny video about DRM (Digital Rights Management; video by David Berlind at ZDNet). Damn, he makes a good point. I was really getting the itch to pick up a video iPod too. Guess I'll wait a bit. Afterall, unless consumers put pressure on vendors to open up, they'll stay proprietary - it's in their best interests.

Then, I got to thinking... The other problem with picking up a device like this is that 4 months later, I'm gonna wish I had waited for that one extra feature that the "next" version has.

What would I want in my dreamPod? Here it is (photo). Let me give you a tour...

1. Camera - facing away from the user. This is the one that let's you snap a quick photo while you're watching the LCD screen to make sure you've got everything "in frame".

2. Camera - facing the user. This one's used for the inevitable two-way video phone functionality, or for you to annotate a picture you just snapped, or to film you and your buddy/girlfriend standing in front of Niagra Falls.

3. Speaker - just enough for you to hear it with your ear pressed to it - because of course, this device is also a phone now.

4. KEYS button - one of my pet peeves with the otherwise brilliantly simple input design of the iPod is that you can't input the Contacts, Calendar or other typical PDA data that it's now starting to support. If you had a quick key for KEYBOARD, then you could just use the touch pad to zoom around the on-screen keyboard and press the center button to "press" a key. This I think would actually be better than a physical keyboard for text-messaging, and also better than a stylus and hand-writing recognition that doesn't work anyway.

5. MIC - Most phone mics are pretty good now. They don't need to be "exactly" where you put your mouth, just in the general area.

6. PIC button - 'cause for candid pics, you've gotta be quick!

7. Center button mod - let's make the touch sensitive surface include the whole circle (button included), not just the donut shape around the perimeter. This opens up a lot more input possibilities than just a "dial" experience.

Dare to dream. I think Apple could do it if they put their minds to it. Maybe they already are...

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About

I can't believe that 70% of software projects fail. It's embarrassing. Something is fundamentally broken here. Left to their own devices, people have a way of over-complicating things. It really doesn't have to be that hard. The trick is knowing what to look for and what key factors to manage. The rest is noise.

About Me

Hi, I'm Craig. I'm currently building a company called Devshop.com. Devshop has a new approach to bringing software in on time, and therefore helps eliminate the total cost of late software.
I started coding when I was knee-high to a grasshopper and I have worked for 5 different software companies in the last 12 years, as head of product development.
In early 2004, I became very frustrated with the fact that general purpose project management methodology is not working for the software industry. My personal belief is that to solve this problem, we need to start focusing on specific types of projects, rather than relying on age-old one-size-fits-all practices and techniques.